Fragments of Fear is an illustrated history of an often neglected film genre: the British Horror Movie. The book examines a wide array of British horror films, and the stories behind them, from the early melodramas of Tod Slaughter right through to Hammer and their rivals Tigon and Amicus, plus mavericks like Michael Reeves, sex/horror director Peter Walker and more recent talents such as Clive Barker, director of Hellraiser. Films featured range in scope from the sadism of Peeping Tom to the mutant SF of A Clockwork Orange. With plentiful illustrations, author Andy Boot unravels a tangled history and discovers many little-known gems amid the more familiar images of Hammer and Tigon, including a wealth of exploitation B-movies, to establish the British horror movie as a genre which can easily stand up to its more lauded American counterpart in the depth and diversity of its scope.